


a sky full of song

by egelantier



Series: drabbles and flashfics [53]
Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Music, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-27 16:32:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17770319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/egelantier/pseuds/egelantier
Summary: While Tariq wanders, Celeste guards the Gate, alone with nobody to share her song with.





	a sky full of song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughingpineapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/gifts).



To be left alone - to be left for decades without a word, without a sound, without silver mind as fast and as lilting as her own. To endure the utter and complete loneliness of queries without response, notes thrown into the void and floundering into empty silence. The crime of it, the abandonment of it! 

The will of the Scribes is impossible to argue with, and they won't accept her rage, her deafening solitude - but Tariq, oh, Tariq she can blame. For daring to sleep the years away, and then for wandering around the countryside with the fluttering moths of mortal lives cupped in his hands. And if he feels the same anguish of their separation, Celeste sings to herself with slow, glacial rage, at least he has _something_ to console him - the music of reeds and blades of grass, the creaking of the wheels, the murmurs of the human speech. But she's alone - alone - alone - 

\- and then Tariq comes to the gate, bearing his charges in tow, bowing to her with formality, with irony, with politeness, with humility of a simple supplicant. As if he doesn't know what she craves, as if he doesn’t know what she's been denied for all those long years, decades that should by all rights pass in a blink for her, in a short, resonant space between two lingering notes. 

His transgressions, her anger, their separation: for a while it does not matter. Over the pitch and strive of the Rites they sing - they talk - Celeste asks, and Tariq answers, and Tariq asks, and Celeste answers, and fate strums under Celeste's fingers, and starlight shines in Tariq's throat. In that moment they sing what-is, and it becomes what-was, and what-is-to-be, and in that space between time - within time - above time - Celeste takes Tariq's hand, and soars. 

And crashes back to the earth. The Rites are over, the mortals' number is diminished, and all of them are gone from her sight. Tariq,gone. And then again; again; again. The sky is darkening, the stars are going silent one by one. Over and over the Rites are repeated, the preordained number, and she can't tell what's worse, the drought or the quenching of her thirst, only to have the cup be taken away again. But she's bound; all of them, bound; to the end of the time, bound. 

Until they aren't; until the little mortals, the ones whose souls she sang and saw and held within her music, ascended and abandoned both, do what she long thought impossible. Freedom for the land above, freedom for the land below, and no more gates - and no more Rites - and Tariq, bringing the fruits of his labors to her feet. 

"Celeste," he says. His cloak does not hide the shining light within anymore. “By your grace, Celeste.” 

Harmonies unfold in the dark silver of his eyes, and she takes his hand - and she opens her mouth for the last song - and her soul, unchained at last, unfurls into starlight.


End file.
